HealthCare.gov down, press call delayed

Federal health officials canceled a regular call with reporters Monday as ObamaCare’s struggling online enrollment portal briefly crashed again.

HealthCare.gov was down and preventing users from starting applications for healthcare coverage on the federal marketplace as of mid-afternoon Monday.

{mosads}A regular 1:30 p.m. call with the media was then rescheduled at 1:45 p.m., prompting questions about the nature of the outage. The site appeared functional again around 2:20 p.m.

An official with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) blamed the call’s postponement on change in schedule. HHS later rescheduled the call for 4 p.m.

The troubling sign for HealthCare.gov comes as HHS rushes to repair the site before Nov. 30, a self-imposed deadline.

The portal has been taken offline at regular intervals for maintenance over the last month, including for 12 hours between Saturday and Sunday. It has also crashed at other times as the result of internal technical issues.

The site’s problems on Monday did not appear linked to any announced repairs.

This report was updated at 3:13 p.m.